A Virginia couple was sentenced on Tuesday for forcing the man’s younger cousin to work at their gas station and convenience store for over three years, according to officials.
They have since divorced.
Harmanpreet Singh, 31, was sentenced to 11 years and four months in prison. Co-defendant Kulbir Kaur, 43, was sentenced to seven years and three months.
The court also ordered them to pay the victim $225,21o in restitution.
“The defendants exploited their relationship with the victim to lure him to the United States with false promises that they would help enroll him in school,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The defendants confiscated the victim’s immigration documents and subjected him to threats, physical force and mental abuse to coerce him to work long hours for minimal pay. “
“The defendants lured the victim to travel from India to Virginia to work at their gas station where they exploited him for over three year,” said Assistant Director Michael Nordwall of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. “The FBI will continue to work in all communities to stop forced labor trafficking and the psychological and physical violence that comes with it.”
After a two-week trial in January, a federal jury in Virginia found Singh and Kaur guilty of conspiracy to commit forced labor, forced labor, harboring for financial gain, and document servitude.
The evidence showed that in 2018, the defendants lured Singh’s younger cousin, then a minor, from India to the United States with false promises of enrolling him in school.
Once the victim arrived, they confiscated his immigration documents and forced him to work at Singh’s store from March 2018 to May 2021.
The victim worked 12 to 17 hours a day, nearly every day, for minimal pay, performing tasks such as cleaning, cooking, stocking, and handling the cash register and store records.
Singh and Kaur used various coercive methods, including physical abuse, threats, confiscation of documents, and degrading living conditions, to compel the victim to continue working.
They also made him sleep in a back office for days, limited his access to food, denied medical care and education, and monitored him with surveillance equipment. They refused his requests to return to India and made him overstay his visa.
The defendants forced the victim to marry Kaur and threatened to take his family’s properties or falsely report him to the police if he tried to leave.
Singh also physically assaulted the victim and threatened him with a revolver on multiple occasions.
The FBI Richmond Field Office investigated the case.